Hammering YouTube, bandwidth caps

[bobdog]

Hey,

My ISP has sent me an email today telling me that my monthly bandwidth will now be capped at 250 GB.

Not so much a big deal for me, but I have two teenagers living in this house, and they hammer YouTube for hours and hours on a daily basis.

And the kids love to watch TV episodes online...when they are done with YouTube, it's all about watching movies.

Oh, then, it's time for the kiddies to do some web surfing and god-knows-what-else.

All of this hooked to my cable connection, which funnels through a router and serves the whole house.

Then don't forget me. I am a web designer and it is a typical day for me to email 25 meg or so a day with attachments, upload/download various sites at 80 meg a session.

What I can't get a fix on is how to calculate YouTube usage- the kids will use it for hours and hours at a time. On the weekends, the kids will hammer YouTube for 16 hours or so...just enough time for them to get some sleep- and wake up and hammer YouTube again.

I can't seem to get reliable numbers on using YouTube. Some forums claim it is possible to use 4-5 GB a day, some claim less...then movies and TV episodes can chow up bandwidth...

Any ideas on actual bandwidth?

[siguie]

I don't know if this helps but when I use Opera to download a youtube video {instead of streaming it} I max out at around 150kbs and that's faster than streaming it ... so ~9MB per minute is the fastest I can get youtube to run on a single connection. Really popular videos seem to run at roughly half that.

I hope that helps ... I thought you might be able to calculate a max possible download ... though of course you may want to do your own speed measurements :)

[Priswell]

Well, I got a similar notification, and the email I got states:

250 GB/month is an extremely large amount of bandwidth and it's very likely that your monthly data usage doesn't even come close to that amount. In fact, the threshold is approximately 100 times greater than the typical or median residential customer usage, which is 2 to 3 GB/month. To put it in perspective, to reach 250 GB of data usage in one month a customer would have to do any one of the following:

* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).

And online gamers should know that even the heaviest multi- or single-player gaming activity would not typically come close to this threshold over the course of a month.

Some of the geeks I hang out with say that it's not that Comcast has recently put a cap on throughput, it's that they were finally forced by the powers-that-be to tell people what their caps were. So, chances are, since this has apparently been going on for a while, you are already staying under the designated caps.

[mhJr_]

My ISP has sent me an email today telling me that my monthly bandwidth will now be capped at 250 GB. http://www.avxf.com/img18.jpg


I think you should be A-OKAY.
I am not exactly sure how to figure out how much bandwidth you use. You should be able to call up your ISP and ask them how much you're using. If they claim a cap, then your bandwidth usage should also be available.

[Early Out]

There are also a bunch of free tools out there that you can install to keep track of how much stuff you're moving. One example (http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/09/09/how-to-monitor-your-internet-bandwidth-usage-in-windows/), but search for bandwidth monitoring, and you'll find a bunch more.

[bobdog]

Oh My!

The place would be a perfect place for me to vent.

Apparently, we did hit the ceiling on bandwidth usage for one month.

I wrote a very polite letter to the teenagers explaining that they exceeded 250 GB in a one month period, and posted it to their various computers. The result? Priceless teenage wisdom written in almost illegible handwriting:

You are stupid. YouTube is free, so you are stupid.

I'm 18 years old now, and I can do what ever I want.

Bandwidth? What's that? I watch movies and it is free.

If the computer does not work, just buy more computer stuff and make it work.

Oh...Lawd...gotta love teenagers... :p

[felgall]

Possible answers?

You are stupid. YouTube is free, so you are stupid.

YouTube is free but the connection between the computer and YouTube isn't free and has to be paid for. Those who think internet connections are free are either ignorant or stupid.

I'm 18 years old now, and I can do what ever I want.

If you want it then you pay for it.

Bandwidth? What's that? I watch movies and it is free.

Bandwidth is the size of the movie being downloaded so you can watch it. We pay for that - it isn't free.

If the computer does not work, just buy more computer stuff and make it work.

If you want it then you pay for it.


My son spends most of his free time at home playing an interactive online game with his friends. Fortunately it uses very little bandwidth as we only get 40Gb a month split into pre and post 7am with 20Gb each but so far I don't think we've ever got to even 2Gb. Ever since he started using the internet I warned him about bandwidth limits and not trying to download huge quantities of data that would use up all the bandwidth early in the month. He's a few months short of 13 so hopefully he will not forget everything he knows on becoming a teenager and start using too much bandwidth.

[Early Out]

Oh...Lawd...gotta love teenagers... :pI think you should seriously consider a regular program of severe beatings. :cool:

[Priswell]

You know, depending on the router you have, you can limit internet access through the router. I'd have to look up yours, but the one I have now lets me restrict hours and which computer on the network has access when.

[Korr]

I ran some tests (an excuse to watch music videos) and it seems like every hour of Youtube is approximately 150-220 megs of data transfer.

I can't manage to crack 1 gig/ day but I'm mostly just listening to radio and reading, writing, or at most downloading backups.

I say, its time for a lesson in free markets. Ration the supply of bandwidth and open up an auction ;)

[alemcherry]

250 GB is more than enough for any kind of users. For your professional work, 30 GB should be more than enough.

Youtube videos generally doesnt take much bandwidth. If you download the flv files to your local pc, you can see the size. 10 minutes video would be taking something like 20 mb or so, max. So your average of 8 GB per day would be good enough to watch more than 24 hrs video! If your kids(2-3?) need more than that, they seriously has a problem and as a parent I guess you need to be a little more strict.

BTW, I am from anothe part of the world and doesn't understand your culture well. Still I guess the response you got from the kids are totally disrespectful and iriresponsible. I cant imagine my kids responding in such a way - that is enough to consider myself as a total failure as a parent. I know America is half way across the globe and Britney Spears' mom is supposed to write a parenting book in that part of the world, so you may not agree with what I feel. Anyway, good luck making your kids understand.

[bobdog]

***Oh My!***

I never said they were my kids. I share a house with a woman that has three kids. She is not my girlfriend nor my wife. We just share rent on a piece of real estate in California.

As per all of the suggestions, I have ripped out the internet connections for all the kiddies. And took Felgall's advice and told them to pay for it themselves.

Again, priceless teenage wisdom when I removed the cable connections throughout the house:

Dude, you're a dick. The internet is free.

and so on...

But, my cable connection suddenly rips super fast since I disconnected the teens from my router. :cool:

Ooohhh, aauughhh, all the sudden there is quiet in the house since I disconnected them. No more boom boom music shaking down the house from YouTube...

Alas, Ummm, I get to sleep at night...

[Lydia123]

<< You are stupid. YouTube is free, so you are stupid.

I'm 18 years old now, and I can do what ever I want.

Bandwidth? What's that? I watch movies and it is free.

If the computer does not work, just buy more computer stuff and make it work.
>>


If those were really the answers you got, you have bigger problems than excessive bandwidth usage.